


Memento Mori

by planningconquest, Slx99



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bonding, But Death doesnt have to be the end, Eventual Happy Ending, Fluff, Force Ghosts, I promise there is, Major character death - Freeform, Murder, Person comes back to life, Someone dies, but also:, this is not a drill
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:55:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26064589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/planningconquest/pseuds/planningconquest, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slx99/pseuds/Slx99
Summary: After deposing of his former master, only one thing stands in Vader's way to absolute power: the young Prince Luke Palpatine. But there is a lot that Vader does not know about the prince.
Relationships: Luke Skywalker & Darth Vader
Comments: 126
Kudos: 374





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: Major Character Death. It's sudden, it's brutal, it's merciless. Please, no complaints, I've given fair warning. And still I stand by my promise in the tags that this story will contain fluff and bonding and eventually the ending will be a happy one. 
> 
> Dedicated to my wonderful writer colleagues, especially my co-autor planningconquest.

+++

The door was locked. It wasn’t always locked. Sometimes it was open just enough for Luke to see the empty corridor beyond. That, like so many other things, was a trap. He knew better than to sneak out of his room at night. He didn’t dare after previous attempts had gone awry. Now, he wished he had learned. He wished he’d learned how to sneak out, how to break out of his room, how to evade the guards, because now he was locked away and the palace was burning. 

True, the palace wasn’t totally in flames. Just where the databanks were stored, where the Emperor lived, and, the main doors. Smoke billowed out onto the main plaza, draping soot over the plants and white marble, staining the stormtroopers running around in in until their usually white armour looked like Vader’s. 

Luke clutched his battered hands close to his chest, too afraid to cry, and shaking too hard to do anything but wait. 

His father had to succeed! He had to defeat Vader, and then come find Luke! Someone had to land a lucky shot! He ran to his only window looking out into the courtyard. There were so many soldiers, so many troopers, and there were TIE’s screaming overhead, shooting at each other. Dropships with more soldiers, ruining the edges of the palace. Luke stifled a scream as part of a damaged TIE slammed into the palace, beyond his view, and the entire building shook. 

Someone had lowered the shields, someone had _let them in_. 

“Nanny!” Luke cried, turning from the window, and ran back to the door. “Nanny! Please! Let me out! Please! Someone! Let me out!” The palace shook again, and Luke pressed his back against the door and bit into his knuckles to keep from screaming. 

“Please, please,” he mumbled into his shaking hands. 

He wasn’t sure what happened next or even when it happened. Just that one moment he was leaning against the door, begging to be saved, and the next he was falling backward on stormtroopers’ sooty, oily boots. 

“Ow! He yelped, and did his best to scramble away. It didn’t work, and he was dragged upright and out of his rooms by faceless masks over empty soldiers. “Stop! Stop! Let me go!” His tunic tore, and they only tightened their grip and quickened their steps. “ _Stop_!” 

These were Vader’s men, and they had either come for him to bargain against his father, or to kill him. 

The throne room was rubble. Black marks climbed up and down the walls, and parts of the room had been shattered to reveal hidden chambers and a few secret passageways. Luke used to spend whole days in here by himself, and he hadn’t known that part of a wall was a two-way mirror with now crushed seating. 

Vader’s dark silhouette stood alone and silent in the center of the carnage. 

“No!” Digging in his heels didn’t work, and he was too small to fight. Vader lifted his head at Luke’s protest. The death’s head mask seemed to focus on Luke, and a sudden chill swept through his system. “No, no, no. Please. Stop.” But they dragged him on and came to a halt just before his father’s murderer. 

Vader’s respirator had to be damaged. It was the only explanation Luke could think of for his ragged, broken breathing. “Little prince," was all he said. Not the usual scorn or insults.

Luke still flinched, turning his face away as Vader’s durasteel fist, gleaming in the red emergency light through the ripped and burned gloves, came to tap gently beneath his chin. 

“No,” the plea was as broken as Luke, as shattered as the bulbs still raining glass into the room. 

“It was not your fault, little prince.” Vader rasped, his voice almost kind. “It is not your fault.”

Luke wanted to speak, to protest, to do anything but stare at him with the same numb, ever-present fear that overwhelmed his mind whenever he was with Vader and in this room. 

Vader gestured sharply, and the troopers kicked Luke to his knees. It was the same harshness that came with being the Imperial prince. His father was deposed, Vader had won, and Luke was a loose end. It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t fair! This was what he had been expecting, for so long. Fearing, and shivering as he lay in the darkness of so many nights under his blankets. 

Detached, he watched the saber fly into Vader’s hand, and then raised his eyes to meet Vader’s. He had no way of knowing he was looking into Vader’s eyes, but he sensed that he did. Vader’s mercy was to simply angle the saber so that Luke didn't _feel_ the pain for very long when the blade was switched on, plunged into his chest, and then blossomed out of his back. 

Luke blinked as the world turned grey and then black before snapping back into place.

+++

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is already a bunch of amazing Luke Palpatine stories out there, which y'all should check out!
> 
> The Original by Spellcleaver [The Heir](https://www.archiveofourown.org/works/24024442/chapters/57801529)
> 
> And stories by planningconquest [Inherited Royalty]()  
> and its two amazing AU spinoffs on her tumblr  
>   
> and by SilverDaye (on tumblr) [The Red Prince](https://silvereddaye.tumblr.com/post/622694826550394880/the-red-prince)  
> [Empire in the Sky](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15128117/chapters/61905016)  
> [Drawn to You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15128117/chapters/55985635)


	2. Chapter 2

+++

Wide eyed, Luke stared at the crimson blade, piercing his chest. It didn’t hurt like it should, perhaps that was the shock and adrenaline coursing through his body. The tight hold of the stormtroopers on his arms, holding him down for Vader to deal with him as he pleased, had vanished too. Luke scrambled back, dignity be damned. A stormtrooper turned toward him. With a yelp, Luke pushed himself to his feet. Blindly he dashed toward the huge double doors of the throne room- just as a bulky general was stepping into in his way.

Luke pressed his eyes together as he pushed with all his strength. He was fueled by courage born of despair. He had nothing to lose. The earlier fear that had petrified him was gone. Vader would kill him and Luke wouldn’t make it easy for him and his cronies.

He pummeled into the man.

And almost lost his footing as the resistance, he had prepared to meet, failed to materialize. Luke continued a few stumbling steps before stopping.

“My Lord, the palace is secured,” the general reported behind him unperturbed as if Palpatine’s son hadn’t just run into him. “But we could not prevent Tarkin and Captain Vassic escaping. Permission requested to expand the search throughout the wider perimeter.”

Something was wrong.

The double doors were right there, but something about all this was off. Warily Luke turned around. There was Vader. He didn’t respond to the general straight away. He seemed lost in thought, pondering the body at his feet.

A body that looked horribly familiar.

No.

Dread built in Luke’s stomach. He didn’t want to, but he knew he had to.Luke edged a little closer to get a slightly better look at the small familiar figure in black robes, made out of expensive materials that was laid sprawled and so very clearly _dead_ at Vader’s feet. Blonde hair like a halo was against black marble tiles, the unmistakable face deathly pale and the hole in the chest scorched and burnt from the heat of the weapon that had been used to carve it.

No.

 _No_.

This wasn’t true. Luke wasn’t dead, he was here. Right here, he was still standing, walking, running even from his would-be-murderer.

How could he be lying dead at his enemy’s feet.

“Very well,” Vader spoke up, tearing his gaze from the body. “Permission granted, General.”

Vader crossed to the pile of entangled robes at the foot of the stairs leading to the throne, that Luke just knew covered what remained of his father. Without reverence, Vader pried Palpatine’s lightsaber from the clawed hand that held it in a death grip and swept from the throne room without missing a beat when he stepped past Luke.

Vader was so close to him, that his billowing cape, torn and scorched in so many places, almost brushed over Luke’s feet, but Vader did not as much as turn his head as if the prince, paralyzed with fear was invisible to him.

+++

Luke sat huddled on the floor of the impromptu morgue, set up in a reception hall of the west wing of the palace, where the destruction from Vader’s attack was least visible.

On one of the two tables before him lay his body, covered with an imperial flag, large enough to hang to the floor and identical to the one that covered emperor Palpatine’s body next to him. Vader seemed intent to sell the general public a thinly veiled story of how they had died, with himself as the hero that sadly couldn’t stop their untimely deaths at the hands of terrorists.

It didn’t matter.

Luke was dead.

There was no denying it anymore.

He had begged and pleaded with the men that had removed his body, to take him to the medcenter or just leave him there so that Luke could find a way to slip back into his body and just wake up from this nightmare. They hadn’t heard him. No one could hear him. Or see him. Or feel him. Regardless how loud he shouted in their ears, how much he waved his hands in front of their eyes, poked them with his incorporeal fingers or tried to hang on to their arms to stop them from stealing his body away.

With a lot more care than they had granted the mangled corpse of his father, dumped unceremoniously on a stretcher, they had lifted Luke’s body on a second hover stretcher. One had given his shoulder a wistful squeeze, closed the eyelids over Luke’s glassy, empty stare and covered his body with the red cloak taken from a fallen royal guard.

That, more than anything had driven home to Luke, that it was too late.

He was dead.

If Vader had struck just two weeks later, Luke would have made it to fifteen years. But now he was dead and Luke had learned from scraps of murmured conversations of Vader’s men, sometimes milling about the morgue, that the coming Empire Day, that should have been his birthday would be the day of his funeral instead.

It didn’t matter. Nor did it matter that Vader was busy consolidating his power, tearing through his father’s loyalists and expanding his reach across the galaxy. The only thing truly on Luke’s mind was his current predicament.

Somewhere in between grueling political lessons and backbreaking physical exercises on Luke’s schedule, he had had some lessons by a history professor from one of Imperial Center’s most prestigious university on the concepts of death and the afterlife that existed throughout the cultures, sentients and planets in the galaxy. For many sleepless nights, Luke had pondered the horrible ideas of eternal rebirth or an afterlife where he’d be reunited with his family. Luke rather believed the clinical, logical view of death that brain scientists would argue.

Oblivion.

Blissful and kind oblivion swallowing him up and wiping away pain and sorrow.

That was what should have happened.

This however, this wasn’t right. Luke was certain. This just _couldn’t_ be how death was. It _mustn’t_. There had to be an alternative to roam the place of his murder for eternity, like a ghost haunting a castle of old and forced to watch his murderer take what he pleased.

Life hadn’t been kind to Luke Palpatine.

It seemed death wouldn’t be either.

+++


	3. Chapter 3

+++

He  _ was _ dead. His body lying in the morgue had been answer enough for him. Seeing his own body, lifted up and around. All without resistance or argument. He had been slack, as much of an empty shell as the bodies they’d taken away from Vader’s and Palpatine’s feet each year. As dead as those who had been publicly executed. The red cloak draped over his body, a makeshift shroud meant to offer a little dignity to the victim, was what really sealed it. There was no rise and fall of his chest, not shuffling or twitching that had given away his fake sleep so many times.

Luke had never been this still. 

If he was dead, why was he still here? Why was he still waiting around? And if Luke was here, where was his father?

Palpatine’s body hadn’t been given any respect. Slack, and parts of him at unnatural angles, they had pulled his oversized hood down over his hideous face. Luke, even dead, was almost too terrified to step closer to his father’s corpse. 

He’d never been so close without permission before. A thin bony hand hung over the side of the table, uncurled and broken from Vader’s vicious assault. Neither his chest rose, nor did a vein in his body twitch. The black cloak obscured most of his body, but Luke could see his chin from beneath the hood. 

“Father?” He whispered, hardly daring to approach. “Father?” Wrapping his arms around himself, Luke ducked his head. “Father...are you there?” He had always been there. A looming figure over everything he’d done, said, and lived. Luke was weak. Hardly even Force sensitive, and his father had been gracious enough to keep him. Shouldn’t the more powerful of the two still be lingering? Shouldn’t Palpatine avenge his death from beyond the grave? Shouldn’t Palpatine be the one here, staring at his shriveled, hollow corpse? “Father?” He missed the way a technician's head swiveled around, eyes widening with shock. There was a burst of fear that Luke ignored. 

With the last of his courage, he shifted closer to his father, and peered around the hood to see his father’s face. He didn’t know what he expected. For this to be an elaborate game? For his father’s eyes to turn from hollow gray to brilliant amber, and for him to leap from the table screaming and cackling? For the unnatural stillness to pass? 

Sheev Palpatine didn’t move, his sightless eyes remained unfocused, sunken deep into a visibly damaged skull. There were tracks of blood trailing from one ear, sliding over his face to pool onto his lips. 

Luke staggered back, moving through a technician who shivered. “Father!” The technician froze, his eyes wide and his hands clutched to his datapad. His head swiveled over to Luke’s body. “Father! No!” If his father was dead, and Luke was dead, then everything was lost. Vader really had won. 

“Shit,” the technician hissed. “Does anyone else hear that?”

“Hear what?” A second man entered, and blanched at the sight of Palpatine’s body. “Yuck, when can we get rid of that?” 

“No clue, but I  _ swear _ I just heard something. A kid…” his eyes focused again on Luke’s unmoving body. “He was calling for his father.”

“I haven’t heard anything.” Luke, half listening to conversation, moved toward the wall. “Is there a draft?” 

“Uh,” both men stared at the two bodies. “Yes.. I felt it too.” 

He couldn’t believe that he was still here! Not Palpatine! Luke! The weak little prince was still around. And Palpatine’s body was just  _ laying there _ . It hadn’t... _ exploded _ with darkness. He hadn’t...faded. He was just... _ dead? _

Sheev Palpatine was dead.

Luke sat down, and watched the two jumpy technicians run scanners over their bodies. 

His father was dead and Luke...was stuck. 

“It’s not...it’s not fair!” He wasn’t sure what to feel, or even if he could. He had no heartbeat to pound, the blood to heat, no mind to whirl...but he was  _ upset _ ? “No, no, no, no, no!” Burying his face in his hands, he half-heartedly wondered what it meant that he could feel his throat close up and his eyes burn. “It’s not fair!” He started to cry. 

Even dead he couldn’t escape! 

“Kark!” Startled out of his crying, Luke watched the technicians hold the scanner up and direct it around the room. “I swear I hear crying.” 

“Crying?” The second tech was shivering, and visibly unwilling to touch Palpatine’s body. 

“There’s a cold spot,” the first whispered, and the scanner was pointing right at Luke. The fear was obvious now. “There’s a cold spot!” 

“A what?” 

“It’s a spot that’s just...colder than the rest of the place! It’s not normal! It’s…” Luke stared directly into the young man’s eyes. “It’s shaped...like a kid.” 

The other one swore, and Luke bolted. Unable to be in the room with the bodies of himself and his father and superstitious technicians. “NO!” No one heard him. He could scream at the top of his lungs and he doubted anyone would hear him. 

The throne room was still full of people and soldiers and Luke stopped where his body had lain. “No, no, no, no, no. no! He grabbed at his hair, and fell to his knees. “No! NO! NO!” The last time he’d been here, Vader had run him through. “No! Force! Why?” He couldn’t talk to anyone. He couldn’t do anything. He was stuck, incorporeal, hollow, and silent. 

He was what he’d been training his whole life to be. A ghost. 

Luke didn’t have physical tears to cry, but he cried anyway. Ghostly shoulders shook, and nonexistent lungs worked to keep up with his relentless sobs. He fell sideways onto the floor, unconsciously mirroring his death pose, and cried. 

The room, previously warm, sank to an uncomfortable chill. Those without helmets could see their breath, and those without long sleeves grabbed jackets. 

Activity bustling around the room slowed once in a while, as an officer, trooper, or guard paused to strain to hear what they thought they heard. Some glanced around nervously, and Luke didn’t see a single officer gaping at him before looking away and squinting again. 

Still, it was crowded, and by the time he’d regained enough of his senses, Luke went back to his bedroom. Tracing the path the soldiers had dragged him down, he sniffled and cried the whole way back. There was no one heard to scold him. No one heard to help him, not that anyone would. 

Dozens of people had stood by when Vader had killed him. 

In his bedroom, he crawled onto his bed, and wept as he watched the movement of the plaza below his window, troop transports emptying droves upon droves of soldiers, walkers patrolling and searchlights illuminating the night. 

Vader was moving quickly, and Luke was left behind. 

+++


	4. Chapter 4

+++

It was his hiding place for the next few days. He stayed in his room, and he stayed in bed. Crying as often as he watched the movements of soldiers and troopers. It was only when they tore down his father’s enormous statue, did Luke decide to venture out of his room. 

No one had entered. No one had had a reason to. Why disturb the quarters of a dead prince? There was no evidence, no information, and nothing of value in his room. 

So Luke wandered, crossing his arms over his chest as he tried to get himself warm. But the heat never came, and the cold was still seeping into his bones even now. He kept moving, up and down the familiar halls of the palace.

They changed daily. With decorations and ornaments coming down, holes being blasted into walls, and walls being erected where hallways had been. Luke found he could easily pass through the walls being constructed, but had a harder time wandering down the new hallways and the layout. 

Sometimes he cried, tracking up and down the hallway that used to lead to a dining room he’d eaten in a few times, and was now a conference room. Other times he sat in a corner, overwhelmed and wishing he could feel the heat of the sun, the warmth of a blanket, or even the touch of a hand. 

Luke could pass through people. Some noticed, and some didn’t. Others shivered when he was around, and when he cried hard enough to shake his frame, and would have been enough to choke him if he’d been alive, people winced and looked around wildly.

If he were honest, he didn’t _want_ to be stuck. He _didn’t_ want to wander around the wretched palace until the end of time. A broken remnant of a bygone era watching history march forward. It wasn’t _fair_ ! After a lifetime of...of... _this_ and he was still around? Was he being punished by the Force for being weak? Was it something his father had done? What was wrong with Luke that his spirit was clinging to the world? 

It wasn’t fair!

+++

But fair or not, Luke refused to believe there was no way for his spirit to leave this galaxy behind. In days and nights morphing together as his restless spirit failed to find the peace that sleep offered to the living, Luke’s despondency slowly amalgamated to determination. 

Determination to end his plight, even if he had to cross the most sacred boundaries his father had set for him.

His father, knowledgeable in even the deepest secrets of the Force, surely would have known the answer of what had gone wrong and why Luke’s spirit was stuck. Knowledge was power, his father had drummed into Luke. And that a Sith never shared their power with the weak and unworthy.

Weak and unworthy like Luke.

Luke reached the corridor that led to his father’s offices and private rooms. It wasn’t deserted as Luke had hoped. Vader had posted some of his men outside Palpatine’s quarters. It would have been impossible for Luke to get past them or even through the closed door. But Luke was dead now. Armed guards meant nothing without a body to be seen or heard by a living soul and ordinary locks and barriers could not hold his spirit back.

Still, there was no denying that some noticed his presence. So Luke made his way down the corridor with caution. The guards didn’t so much as shift. Not even when Luke waved an experimental hand in front of the helmet visor of one of them. A little more confident, he slipped past them unseen and right through the closed main door. 

The office, that lay behind the door and a short corridor, was dark and quiet. 

A tight knot of cold fear was coiling in Luke’s stomach, quashing any new-found confidence. He hadn’t been in here often. It was rare that his father had directly summoned him. But whenever he had, Luke could almost be sure that he was about to be punished for some severe failure. A mistake big enough for the emperor to see to disciplining his disappointing son himself. 

One time he had made Luke kneel until he, after hours and hours, fell to his side from sheer exhaustion. That had made his punishment even worse. Another time, when Luke had actually dared to slip outside his rooms at night, Palpatine had been positively furious. He had unleashed his Force Lightning on Luke till he was satisfied Luke had learned his lesson and he had his Red Guards drag Luke, half conscious and unable to walk anymore, back to Nanny.

Looking around the dreadfully familiar room, Luke thought he could almost hear his screams still echo faintly in here, could feel the charges of the lightning crackle over his skin, ready to burn and hurt.

Luke rather did want to imagine what punishment he’d deserve, would his father still be alive to see what his son had set out to do, how flagrantly Luke was about to break the most sacred of boundaries set.

 _No_.

He needed to chase such thoughts away. He hadn’t come here to reminisce on his own failures and shortcomings as a son and heir. He was here to find a way to end his current predicament. Luke stepped into the room, past the impressive inlaid imperial cog. Behind the massive desk with the large chair Palaptine had preferred to sit enthroned in, the light of Imperial City was faintly illuminating the room. 

With a last wistful glance at the glimpse of true freedom behind the reinforced transparisteel windows he turned to the right, where the entrance to Palpatine’s vault was. That was where his father kept his artifacts and, more importantly, the many holocrons he had collected from all over the galaxy.

Some of them contained the most secret, closely guarded secrets of the Jedi order that his father had destroyed. Others contained the ancient secrets of powerful Sith Lords.

Surely one of them would contain the answer Luke was searching for.

There were no additional guards posted at the door to the vault. Under his father’s orders, the room had always been guarded by a set of red-robed royal guards. Vader clearly didn’t find it necessary to keep the vault guarded. The reason for that seemed obvious. Fresh marks of a lightsaber criss-crossed over the wall, the traces of molten durasteel were bearing testament to Vader’s fury as the security and protections installed by Palpatine had kept the usurper out. 

There was a flicker of satisfaction in Luke. Vader might have murdered Luke and his father, but he still couldn’t just claim whatever he desired. Palpatine had made sure of it. But that was only a pathetic excuse of satisfaction, considering the devastating victory that Vader had already gained. 

The thought wiped the faint smile that had crept on Luke’s ghostly face away quickly. If Vader couldn’t enter the vault, then what hopes did Luke have. He closed his eyes, tried to calm his nerves and quash the voice inside of him screaming at him what punishment he’d richly deserve for attempting to enter the vault without permission.

He willed himself forward, right through the door-

And hit against some barrier, as solid to his ghostly body as if he had run into a wall as a living. Luke tried again. And again. And _again_. But neither door nor walls would let him through. His father must have thought of some powerful protection, that didn’t just keep Lord Vader out, but also Luke in his ghostly state.

Before Luke could start another attempt to enter the room beyond, he was stopped by the noise of the main doors hissing open. Luke froze, wishing with all his heart that no one would enter. But the hissing wouldn’t stop, it swelled and then morphed into the dreadfully familiar sound of Vader’s respirator, no longer sounding damaged and rasping, but rich and menacing as it always did.

“Who entered these rooms?” Vader’s voice thundered.

“No one has entered, my Lord,” a voice, muffled through a helmet, reported. “The system has not reported any breach-“

“Quiet.” Vader' growl cut the guard off. “I can feel a presence. Someone is in here.”

Luke stood paralyzed with fear, his back against the vault, unyielding even to his incorporeal self. Vader had sensed him. Vader would _find_ him. 

Luke needed to get away but all he could do was stand trembling where he was, as heavy boots fell closer and closer to him. Haunted Luke searched for a place to hide. His eyes settled on the door opposite the vault. It led to his father’s private chambers. 

No. He couldn’t go in there, not even with the Dark Lord closing in on him. He’d _deserve_ much worse than death if he ever dared to set foot over that threshold.

There was only one spot where he could hope to hide. Luke dived behind the large desk. His ghostly heart was hammering in his throat. Luke pressed an invisible hand to his mouth to stifle the sounds of fear that threatened to escape his lips as the heavy footsteps grew louder and louder and the sound of Vader’s respirator reverberated around the room.

The footfalls stopped, not far from Luke’s hiding spot. Luke pressed his eyes shut. He thought he could feel Vader’s attention sweep the room as he searched for a sign of the presence he had sensed.

_He can’t see you. He can’t hurt you._

Luke repeated that mantra in his head over and over and over. Steps broke the quiet as Vader moved again, but it didn’t sound like Vader was coming closer to him. Luke dared, ever so slowly, peaking around the desk. Vader now stood in front of the vault, examining the door, his gloved hands trailing over the lightsaber masks and the spot where Luke had just soundly failed to pass through.

Now was the time. Vader seemed satisfied that no one had disturbed the office. He was distracted.

Luke inched very slowly, around the desk, keeping to the wall as if it would offer him protection. The short corridor leading back to the main hallway was close, so invitingly close. Vader whipped around in that instance. His glare was homing in on Luke’s direction with terrifying accuracy. Vader took a step closer and reached for his lightsaber, hanging from his belt. His mask angled this way and that, searching.

 _He can’t see you,_ Luke reminded himself. _Don’t panic. He can’t-_

“Who is there,” Vader demanded imperiously. “Show yourself.”

Luke bit his fist to stifle a whimper. 

The red lightsaber sprang into life, it’s hellish glow reflecting on that murderous, insectoid mask. Panic dropped like a veil, clouding Luke’s senses. Without any care or caution he dashed forward. Just away, _away_ from his murderer. He ran out the office, past the guards, through the corridor and headfirst through the wall at the end of it. Blindly Luke raced down turbolift shafts and through walls and halls.

By the time Luke slowed his mad race and had regained a modicum of calm, assured that he had shaken Vader off and was truly alone, he found himself at the other end of the palace.

+++ 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Spellcleaver for beta reading!

+++

Luke hadn’t dared to return to his father’s vault, or anywhere near the central spire it was located in. He had also made sure to keep far away from wherever he suspected Vader was, too afraid to face  _ him _ again. But Vader’s fierce determination to gut from the palace anything reminding of the former regime had moved to the wing that housed Luke’s former quarters, the activity driving Luke from his refuge. 

So Luke had instead taken up residence in the repurposed reception hall where his father’s body was still lying in state, a large Imperial flag draped across the monstrous casket and four guards in the red garb of the Royal Guard keeping vigil. None of them were actual guardsmen, just traitorous troopers that Vader had dressed up to gloss over the fact that he himself had slain each and everyone of Palpatine’s actual bodyguards.

There was a constant stream of visitors paying their respects to his late father. He found it deeply uncomfortable watching people making a show of placing flowers or datacards on the casket containing his father’s body, mourning the loss of their leader, supposedly at the hands of terrorists. 

But in the much smaller side aisle of the hall, where a second casket with Luke’s remains was placed he could find a bit more peace and quiet. Very few visitors bothered to step inside here. Luke didn’t mind. It was a place that Vader seemed to avoid like the Zygerrian Plague and that made it better than anywhere else for Luke to stay and think of a way to escape this impossible situation. 

A single guard stood vigil here and Luke took some petty joy terrorising the imposter, by creeping closer and closer until the man started throwing worried glances over his shoulder into the dark corners of the room.

Some senators who had come to pay their token respects to his father used the quiet side aisle for surreptitious talks. Listening hard, Luke learned this way how Vader was striving to tighten his hold on the galaxy, but also of the resistance he met in some sectors where governors and moffs were rallying their own forces to oppose the self-proclaimed emperor. Luke liked to think it was because they weren’t buying Vader’s thin story of a rebel attack on his father, but it was likely just because they sought to get their own share of power instead.

Even fewer visitors came in here to lay down flowers at his casket. 

Senator Organa had shown up once, placing down a wreath of white Nabooian lilies. Luke had scoffed, both at the notion that such flowers would mean anything to Luke, who had never spent more than a handful of days on his father’s homeworld for official visits, and more so at the senator’s gall wearing such a distraught expression. As if Organa wasn’t secretly pleased that there was one less despot and his useless offspring in this galaxy.

But Luke knew this too was only a temporary refuge. 

In just two standard days there would be the grand funeral and Luke would still be stuck at the palace with no way out and once again without a peaceful place to hide.

In the quiet hours of the night, Luke tried to gather his courage to face the one man who would know what was needed to set Luke’s spirit free.

Only one who could tell him.

Vader.

Luke had been terrified of the masked enforcer for as long as he could remember. Palpatine had always told him that all that kept Lord Vader from murdering Luke was his protection. How right he had been.

But now Luke was already dead at Vader’s hands. He couldn’t kill him again, could he? 

_ He’s a Sith, if someone can still hurt you, it’s Vader. _

Luke shook his head to chase away that particular thought. It was confronting his fears and murderer once more, or roaming this horrible place for eternity. 

Luke had never set foot into Vader’s quarters before. It would have been a death sentence, and Luke had known better than to try it. He doubted that anyone, aside from Vader’s trusted aides and a handful of droids, their memories wiped before they left, had ever set foot inside them. 

When Luke was a little younger, he used to have nightmares about being trapped in there, unable to open the door with Vader slowly closing in, his hand outstretched as he always did when he was about to strangle someone. 

Luke had witnessed how Vader killed. He had seen him use the Force to strangle embezzling politicians. He had seen him crush captive insurgents, kneeling already bloodied and broken before the Palpatine. He had seen him run through disloyal officers with his red blade. 

Just like he had murdered Luke.

Luke had been always careful not to do anything that would offend Vader. His father had made sure he rarely met the man, to keep him safe. Luke understood well why Vader hated him. Luke was the only thing that stood in his way between Vader and the throne and the Dark Lord  _ hated  _ him for it. Henever had bothered to make it a secret how much he despised him, purely for existing. 

His father had always told Luke that he’d survive no day into Vader’s reign.

It hadn’t been an hour, in the end.

_ No.  _

These thoughts didn’t help.

His fear didn’t help.

He was stuck in this world, a disembodied ghost and he wanted this nightmare to  _ end _ .

Even if that meant confronting Vader.

That was why he found himself in the very corridor leading to Vader’s personal quarters. Careful to keep his emotions and fears to himself, Luke slipped past the guards posted at the entrance to the new emperor’s quarters unnoticed.

The rooms beyond the door seemed oddly normal for the Dark Lord’s lair. Nothing like a younger Luke’s wild imagination had pictured them. There certainly seemed to be no krayt dragon trapped in here to rip apart any unwise intruder. A corridor with an unoccupied niche for an aide led into a larger room, which was cool, austere, and void of any decorations or unnecessary furniture. But the same was true for much of the imperial palace. His father had never set much store to representation or opulent displays of power and wealth, either.

He hadn’t needed such tools to underpin his long uncontested authority.

It seemed that Vader felt the same.

There was only one piece of equipment that stood out: the large, egg-shaped pod that stood in the middle of the room. Luke shifted closer to it; ghostly fingers brushed over the smooth, black metal of the pod. There was no visible hatch or door, nor any control panel to open it, but Lord Vader didn’t need one. Not when he was a master in the Force second only to-

Luke’s throat closed up.

His father was dead, bested by Vader. He shouldn’t have been able to. His father had always told Luke that he was careful to keep his apprentice under control. Luke would rather not know what horrid foul play Vader had resorted to to backstab the mighty Sheev Palaptine. 

_ No. Concentrate, Luke. _

Vader had to be in the pod. Luke circled it. It was firmly closed. Luke gathered his courage and then willed himself forward and through the walls of the pod, half expecting them to keep out his ghostly form like the vault had. But he passed straight through.

And almost immediately backed out again.

In contrast to the pod’s dark exterior, the interior was blindingly bright, the sterile white walls only broken by monitors and consoles, instruments and communication devices surrounding the large seat in the middle. It would feel claustrophobic even without the hulk of the Dark Lord throned on the seat in the middle. 

But that in itself wasn’t what had shaken Luke to his core.

It was seeing the Dark Lord unmasked. 

Only a small breather covered the man’s mouth and chin. Luke had never seen his face before. He doubted anyone had ever seen him like this and lived to tell the tale. His father had mentioned in scornful passing that Vader was bound to his respirator and life support suit due to horrible injuries sustained in a shamefully lost duel. The knowledge hadn’t prepared Luke for this sight. 

The skin on Vader’s face was pale as if it hadn’t seen daylight for as long as Luke was alive. Face and scalp were mottled with horrible scars and burn marks. Any facial hair had been burnt away too by whatever had left the man disfigured. For the split of a second it made Vader look vulnerable. Fragile. Almost pitiful. But then Lord Vader swivelled around from where he sat facing the screens and consoles. His yellow eyes were now searching with terrifying accuracy the direction where Luke was.

“Who are you?” Vader demanded. “I know you are here. I can feel your presence.”

Vader grasped in Luke’s direction but to Luke’s relief did the gloved hands pass right through him. Vader’s sickly yellow eyes continued to search the corner where Luke stood.

“You cannot hide from me,” Vader growled. “I am the master here. Show yourself and I might be inclined to give you a merciful death.”

Luke scoffed. He  _ was  _ dead. Whatever Vader wanted to do to him, he already had. 

In that precise moment Vader’s yellow eyes fixed on Luke with deadly certainty, as if Luke’s derision had led Vader on his track like a Corellian Slice hound. “You!  _ You _ ! I see you now, boy.”

Fear petrified Luke. 

It had been a mistake to come here.

Vader waved his hand in a subtle motion, without leaving his gaze off Luke for even a standard second. Luke tensed at the soft whirring of machinery overhead. A mechanical arm descended from above to replace the helmet on Vader’s scarred head. The moment it sealed shut with a hiss, Vader was out of his seat to stalk toward Luke. 

Luke couldn’t help himself. His feeble courage evaporated and he backed away, out of the pod. But Vader would not let him go that easily. The pod started to split into two halves with an ominous hiss, opening in a jagged line like the jaws of a rancor. Vader stalked out, masked again and in his full regalia, unlit lightsaber in hand and his deadly gaze still locked on Luke. 

A huge mistake.

Luke forced himself to stay put, even as he was shivering with fear. He hadn’t come here to flee in terror. He had come with purpose and it was too late to run and hide now anyway.

Vader stalked down from the pod, each heavy step falling ominously.

“Be gone, boy. I killed you. Leave at once.”

Somehow that managed to snap Luke out of his paralyzing fear, replacing it with anger. “I  _ can’t _ .”

“What?” Defying possibility, Vader managed to look even more dangerous than usual as he was looming over Luke’s ghostly form. But Luke was still spurred by a flash of righteous anger.

“I want to leave,” he snapped. “But I can’t. Why is this happening, what did you do to me?” 

Vader chose not to answer him. He stabbed a finger into Luke’s face instead. “You were the intruder in Palpatine’s office.”

A fresh wave of hot ire washed through Luke at that. “No.  _ You  _ are the intruder. You  _ murdered  _ my father. He trusted you and you murdered us. You have no right to loot his vault. You have no right to even be here.”

“Be quiet, ghost boy. You know nothing of what is rightfully mine.”

“I-if you don’t help me, I’ll make sure everyone learns the truth how you murdered us,” Luke blurted out, praying to the Force that Vader wouldn’t be able to sense his bluff.

Vader stalked closer and closer. Luke forced himself to stand his ground.

Vader towered over him, his mask staring down on Luke’s ghostly face.

“You dare threaten me, boy?”

Everything in Luke yelled at him to run. To hide. Not to aggravate Vader any further.

But he stood his ground.

“I _do_.”

+++


	6. Chapter 6

+++

Luke hadn’t planned on threatening Vader. He had meant to ask for help, not downright blackmail the man with something Luke could barely follow up on. What he was doing was plain suicide. Or it would have been if Luke weren’t already dead. 

But even that fact couldn’t calm his nerves or lessen his fear of the Sith. So it took even more courage this time to return to the central spire of the palace than it had on Luke’s first visit to his father’s vault, as this time he knew that Vader had told him to come here at this specified time.

_ There is no alternative _ , he told himself.  _ You want this curse to end and this is the way. _

With utmost caution, Luke peeked his head out of the turbolift shaft that he had used to make his way up. And found the place crawling with people. Grey clad technicians and stormtroopers milled about. It made Luke hesitate in his steps. 

Why had Vader told him to come here at this time?

Then the bone-shaking screech of a vibrodrill was filling the air.

Luke hastened his steps, through the door and down the corridor into his father’s old office, only to find it even more crowded than the corridor outside. A full technical crew was busy moving heavy machinery around. Several teams were operating drilling equipment to carve holes into the wall to the vault. White dust was filling the room and already settling in a thin layer on top of the furniture and artwork that had been shoved to one side without any care or reverence for Palpatine’s prized possessions to make space.

In the middle of all the noise and mayhem towered Lord Vader, overseeing the proceedings.

Furious, Luke stomped through the room to face Vader, hating it for the first time that his ghostly shape was unable to produce the noise to enforce his anger.

“What are they doing?” Luke demanded without preamble. “Stop this.”

Vader was studiously ignoring the ghost in front of him. But Luke wasn’t about to back down.

“I know you can hear me, tell them- tell them to stop,” Luke shouted over the noise.

Mercifully the blasphemous screech of the drills died down in that moment. Luke took some heart at that.

“Good. Now tell them to get out! You know that no one is allowed in here,” he demanded.

That finally got some kind of reaction from Vader, who growled in anger. The officer that had stepped up to them in that precise moment turned  _ very  _ white. “M-my Lord, drilling is complete. At your order the charges can be placed,” he reported with a strained voice.

Charges?

_ Charges _ ???

“What??” Luke demanded. “The- the charges? What is he talking about??”

Vader ignored Luke. “Proceed,” he ordered.

Luke flustered. Vader was about to have Palpatine’s entire office destroyed to get into his father’s vault. 

“No, don’t. Tell him to stop this. You can’t just blast this room.”

Vader made an odd twitching move and his hand was brushing over the hilt of his lightsaber, but he kept his masked stare on the officer, determined not to listen to the ghost of Palpatine’s son.

“Yes, my Lord,” the officer acknowledged.

“No, don’t listen to him,” Luke turned to plead to the officer directly. “Vader’s got no right to destroy the emperor’s possessions. You’re not even allowed in here. No one is allowed in here.” Luke stepped in the way of the man, but he passed right through him. “Please you need to listen-” 

“Be quiet,” Vader growled. 

The officer turned around, his face very white. “M-my Lord, I-“

“Not you,” Vader snapped. “Get to work.”

The man practically fled to the other end of the room. Luke rounded back on Vader. “Stop this madness-“

It was to no avail, Vader ignored him, no matter Luke said. Instead of ordering off his men, Vader’s increasing fury at Luke’s pleading was making them work faster, the red-hot anger palpable in the room even to non-force sensitives. 

“Status?” Vader finally demanded.

The officer was quickly back at his side. “Preparations are finished, my Lord. On your order we-“

“Ignition authorized.”

“ _ No _ !” Luke shouted. “Don’t do it.”

But the officer couldn’t hear him and Vader  _ wouldn't  _ hear him. The man nodded sharply, raising the ignition pad in his hand. Luke lunged. But his ghostly hands passed right through the man’s hands and the pad.

“Clear danger zone,” the officer snapped and the techs were quick to vacate the room while Vader took cover behind a portable shield generator that had been placed in one corner of the room. 

_ “No, no, no.” _

Luke dashed forward instead, trying feverishly to rip out the wires of the explosives to stop the ignition in the very last moment.

A deafening bang went through the room. Belatedly, Luke dropped to the floor and pressed his ghostly hands before his eyes. Dust and debris flew at him- and through him. 

“Evidently explosives have little effect on you,” Vader remarked when dust and rubble had cleared. Luke finally dared to look up at the towering Dark Lord, from where he cowered shivering on the floor. 

He was on his feet in an instant, practically fuming. “How dare you do-“

Vader stabbed a finger in Luke’s ghostly face. “This palace is mine now, the entire Empire is  _ mine  _ to do as I see fit with.”

“You’re nothing but a common thief and murderer.”

Vader stabbed a warning finger into Luke’s face. “Be quiet, ghost boy, if you know what is good for you.”

“Don’t call me that. I have a name.”

“I will call you whatever I please. Now get in there.” Vader gestured at the gaping hole in the wall, through which the dusty and distorted remains of shelves and pedestals that had housed his father’s treasures were visible in the slowly clearing dust. “Find what you are looking for and then  _ leave _ .”

“You- you will help me.” Luke tried to call up on every bit his father had told him about rhetoric to make people do his bidding. Alone, without the help of a Sith, Luke doubted he’d get any answers from the cryptic holocrons hidden inside that rarely responded to the uninitiated and even rarer to a weak force user like himself.

But Vader didn't move. He was measuring Luke’s ghostly shape from head to toe. “Oh, do I now?” he drawled. 

Luke crossed his arms. “If you don’t, I’ll tell everyone how you murdered the emperor.”

“I think not,” Vader merely scoffed. “Your ability to alert others to your presence seems woefully limited. I have heard the scarce reports who seem to have been briefly aware of your presence. None have reported to hear anything more than pathetic wailing and you have proven my suspicion today. You lied when you claimed that you can influence the living to listen to you lamenting your demise.”

Luke felt even colder than he already did as a ghost.

“Yet I do not deny that I wish you dead and gone for good,” Vader continued. “Which is why I have allowed you to come here. Now be quiet and seek out what you wish to know. I have no desire for you to keep disturbing me.”

It wasn’t wise by any account. But something about Vader’s dismissiveness was pushing Luke over the edge and into the deep end.

“I won’t,” he insisted stubbornly. 

“What did you say?” Vader seethed.

“I said I  _ won’t.”  _ Luke stomped his foot down, wishing very much this gesture wouldn’t be so pathetic when he couldn’t even produce a sound. 

“I grow tired if you, child. Go and find what you seek or go cry to yourself all you like, for all I care.”

“I won’t leave. I’ll- I’ll bother you every day of your life if you don’t help me,” Luke blurted out.

“You  _ dare _ -” The silver and black hilt of the Sith’s lightsaber flew into Vader’s hand and a split second later the ruby-red blade burst forward with a dangerous  _ snap-hiss _ . “I have put up with far more of your insolence than I should have, brat. This ends  _ now _ .”

Luke stood frozen to the spot, trembling with horror and fear as the red blade swung to decapitate him clean. It was the moment of his death, that recurring nightmare he had ever since, now repeating itself in reality. But there was no sharp pain, to agonizing slash. There wasn’t even a tingle. The sword went straight through Luke’s ghostly shape like it was but thin air.

Vader growled with pure anger. His free hand flew out, extended in Luke’s direction. Luke knew what this gesture meant. He had seen Vader choke the life out of unlucky souls that had offended him or Palpatine. Luke instinctively sucked in a breath into no longer existing lungs.

He waited for the horrible sensation of his throat to close up to manifest. 

Nothing happened. Luke had hoped for it before when he had gone to confront Lord Vader. Now  _ he  _ had proof as well. Vader couldn’t hurt him anymore. Not even with all his famed murderous intent. Luke snorted.

“It seems  _ your  _ ability to kill me is what is woefully lacking.”

Vader shouted in rage. Large pieces of rubble lifted in the air and hurled at Luke- only to fly right through him. 

Luke grinned. Vader might have called him out on his lie, but now Luke too had confirmation that Vader was powerless to hurt him.

“Nothing. You’re  _ still _ not doing it right,” he mocked. “Help me or I’ll haunt you until your dying day.”

+++

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to Spellcleaver for your insights and betaing!!


End file.
